


Make a Long Story Short

by neverbirds



Category: The Book of Mormon - Ambiguous Fandom, The Book of Mormon - Parker/Stone/Lopez
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M, Post-Canon, Prompt Fill, prompt collection
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-11
Updated: 2018-05-24
Packaged: 2019-02-13 15:03:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 15,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12986586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neverbirds/pseuds/neverbirds
Summary: "Some moments are nice, some are nicer, some are even worth writing about."Or, a messy, out-of-order scrapbook.





	1. Last Dance

**Author's Note:**

> Hello again! 
> 
> I've been doing prompt fills over at my tumblr @neverbirds and I've written so many I'm losing track of them all. Anyway, I know some people don't really use tumblr so for those guys (but mostly myself) I thought I'd put them all here so they're all in one place!
> 
> They all take place in canon, although do not exist in the same universe.
> 
> Feel free to message me/comment with more prompts and I'll get round it to asap! These have been amazing practice for me and have really made me think about their characters in ways I haven't before. 
> 
> Anyway, enough rambling - enjoy!

Kevin, for all of his downfalls, is an excellent drunk. Connor learned this both the easy and the hard way. You could ply him with three beers, at first, and watch as his tongue slowly started to unravel and he would say the most ridiculous things. But then those ridiculous things started to seem a little less ridiculous, and it all started to make more sense and everything got twice as confusing all at once.

All of Connor’s problems seem to revolve around Kevin’s mouth. And when he drinks, his mouth does all sorts of things. He says – well, anything and everything that comes to his head, he sings, he smiles the widest smile you’ve ever seen, with lots of shiny, white teeth. He wraps his mouth around the neck of a bottle and he –

“Shall we?” says Kevin, holding out his hand. Connor takes it, eagerly, without really knowing what he’s agreeing to. Kevin hoists him up off the ground, and Connor trips just a little, maybe slightly possibly on purpose, and stumbles into Kevin. Kevin steadies him by putting his hand on the small of his back, even though that’s not how you stop somebody from falling at all. 

“It’s the last song, and you’ve been avoiding me all night.”

“I have not,” says Connor, even though he has.

“Liar,” says Kevin, and raises his eyebrows. Connor raises his, too. When Kevin smiles, Connor can’t help but follow suit. He’s found that he’s usually following Kevin, somehow or another. He lets Kevin drag him by the wrist to the middle of the party, and he forgets for a moment that Kevin is drunk and a drunk Kevin is a clumsy Kevin when he bumps into Kalimba and almost knocks her over. Drunk Kevin is an overly confident Kevin. Drunk Kevin is affectionate and open and really, really likes to slow dance. Connor thinks it’s because he likes to cling to people like a monkey. Connor has experienced this first hand more than once, because Connor is now the only one who actually lets him – even Arnold won’t, anymore, because last time Kevin stole Arnold for half of the night, Nabulungi hit Kevin so hard his upper arm still had a red mark the next day. Besides. It’s not like Connor has anything else to do.

Kevin forces Connor to drape over him, and he wishes he could relax, he really does, but there are so many people and Kevin isn’t exactly the kind of person who can blend into a crowd. Kevin always insists on leading, even though that is - quite literally - Connor’s job, which means that Connor gets his toes stepped on more than once. It is, overall, a dismal affair.

“Why have you been avoiding me?”

“Because you’re a terrible dancer,” says Connor, which is half-true. “And you’ll probably do something inappropriate and stupid. That’s kind of your thing.”

“Rude,” Kevin says, directly into Connor’s ear. Connor, deliberately, does not flinch. 

“Like what?”

“You know what,” says Connor, ghosting his lips over Kevin’s cheek.

“Enlighten me.”

Connor rolls his eyes where Kevin can’t see him. He squeezes Kevin’s shoulder.

“Later,” he tells Kevin’s ear. Kevin nods imperceptibly, his hair tickling Connor’s forehead a little.The music stops playing, but Kevin doesn’t let go of him for a moment, and then another, and then a third, more awkward and uncomfortable one. 

“Kevin,” says Connor.

“Right. Sorry,” he says, and lets go. Connor feels his absence almost immediately. “It’s later. Now. Than earlier.”

“It is,” says Connor, smirking. Kevin wiggles his eyebrows. “And your bedroom is empty.”

Kevin practically pulls Connor back to the hut.

“I’m a bad dancer,” says Kevin, pushing Connor through the door. “But I’m good at other things.”

“Prove it,” Connor says, and pulls him through the doorway with him. Kevin kicks the door shut behind him with his foot, and he leans in, grabs fistfuls of Connor’s hair and opens his mouth against his and – well. Kevin’s mouth doesn’t really seem like much a problem, anymore.


	2. Breaking the Rules

Connor had a friend in school who used to chew gum and tell Connor that _rules were meant to be broken_. Connor, at the time, was horrified. Present day Connor, however, understands exactly what he meant. Being able to lie in until eleven because he couldn’t get to sleep until three makes Connor truly understand what a blessing actually is. Wearing sneakers feels like the best thing that’s ever happened to him. Not having to be glued to Church all the time means that they don’t annoy each other anymore. Even better, it means that Connor gets to spend _alone_ time with a certain, very specific Elder.

And speaking of – Connor’s favourite part of being demormonised, is that Kevin has grown his hair out. It’s floppy, all of the time, and there’s a little curl that decorates his forehead that he’s always pushing back out of his face in an alarmingly attractive fashion. He wrinkles his nose when it’s windy and it gets in his eyes and Connor can’t help himself, he’s ruffling it constantly, because knowing that he’s the one to make Elder Price look that rumpled does things to Connor’s stomach.

“Get off,” says Kevin, one day, swatting away Connor’s hand. Connor doesn’t even pretend to have a reason anymore.

“You need a haircut,” Connor says, running the length of his through his fingers. “You look ridiculous.”

“My hair looks incredible,” says Kevin, leaning back on his chair and cranking his neck so he’s looking at Connor upside down. Connor pulls at face at him, because the entire problem is that Kevin is right – for once – and he’s not about to start fighting a losing battle.

“You ego is so large, I can almost watch it grow,” says Connor. Kevin swivels around in his chair to face Connor properly, and his eyes are so big and his smile is so wide. Everything about Kevin is exaggerated and over the top and ridiculous, and the worst part is that Connor falls for his charms every time. “You’re breaking rule number seven _and_ eight, you know.”

“That’s the fun part,” says Kevin. “Besides, you’re one to talk. Rule seventy-seven.”

Connor glares at him.

“Do not flirt,” Kevin explains, as if Connor didn’t also learn every rule by heart.

“Hypocrite,” says Connor.

“We could break rule number seventy eight,” Kevin says, airily, not looking at Connor. “If you wanted.”

“Do not date?”

“Right,” Kevin says, looking adorably nervous. Connor gives him his most crooked, impish grin. He leans down so he’s very close to Kevin’s face, and his eyes flicker down to watch Kevin swallow.

“I love breaking rules,” says Connor, and then leans in and presses his lips to Kevin’s eagerly awaiting mouth. “I’ll let you buy me a coffee if I can cut your hair.”

“Deal,” says Kevin.

Connor threads his fingers through Kevin’s hair, properly, like he’s wanted to do for what feels like an eternity, and allows Kevin to pull him down onto his lap, mouthing at the skin under Connor’s ear.

Connor’s changed his mind. This is definitely, definitely Connor’s favourite rule to break.


	3. Pool

Connor watches a little drop of sweat on its journey down from Kevin’s temple to his clavicle. Connor should probably tell Kevin off for undoing _every_ button – an unnecessary yet not entirely undesirable amount, in Connor’s opinion - of his shirt, leaving only a vest. He doesn’t. It’s probably best, he reasons with himself, to pretend he’s barely even noticed. Kevin looks up at him through the matted excuse of his usually floppy hair and grins. Connor averts his eyes, but somehow, like a self-destructive moth to an unfairly attractive flame, they find their way back to staring at the little pool of sweat that’s collecting on Kevin’s collarbones. Connor kind of wants to lick it off. And by kind of, he means he’s going to burn this image into his memory and fantasise about exactly that when he inevitably can’t sleep tonight.

He should probably stop what he’s doing before his brain shuts down entirely and he loses all of the function between his brain and his mouth and he does something really impulsive and stupid. That’s Kevin’s thing. Connor’s thing is being entirely reasonable, if a little pedantic and often hypocritical, and reasonable people don’t grab their probably-straight-but-we’re-not-sure half-friends and late-night confidants by their faces and kiss them senseless in front of literally everyone they know. There’s a time and a place, he thinks, and the answers to when and where are, unfortunately for Connor, never and nowhere.

“Why are you staring at me?” Kevin asks, after a while, and Connor snaps back to himself and self-consciously touches his face to make sure he wasn’t drooling.

“I wasn’t,” says Connor. He’s getting pretty good at this whole lying thing. “Just spaced out.”

Connor knows that Kevin knows why he was staring. Even Kevin can’t be that stupid.

“Sure you were,” he says, and raises his eyebrows. Connor raises his back. He doesn’t usually back down from a challenge, which is something Connor also knows that Kevin knows. He’s very good at playing dumb, however, and he assumes it’s for Connor’s benefit. Connor is grateful. It means that he can pine after Elder Price in peace. Elder Price probably likes being pined after. Their little arrangement is, at least, mutually beneficial. “You seem to space out a lot. Maybe you should talk to somebody about it.”

Connor gives him a look. Kevin looks back.

“That might be nice,” says Connor, as airily he can. “Anyone you have in mind?”

“I can think of somebody who might be interested,” says Kevin.

Connor practically swoons. His eyes drift, involuntarily and embarrassingly, back to Kevin’s collarbone, then his throat as he swallows, all the way to Kevin’s mouth. It twitches in response. Connor thinks, maybe never and nowhere really mean the middle of the night and the couch.

“That somebody might want to put their shirt back on beforehand, though,” says Connor. “Or I might get the wrong idea.”

Kevin _blushes_. Connor thinks: _oh_.

“Shirts are overrated,” says Kevin. Connor gives him his most crooked, impish grin. _Later_ , he says with his eyes. Kevin blinks back.

Connor goes back to staring at the sweat collecting on Kevin’s shoulder blades, only this time he doesn’t even bother pretending not to. He doesn’t bother committing it to memory, either; he thinks maybe the inevitably of a sleepless night might not need fantasies.


	4. Irresistible / Fading away

It’s blazing hot out, and he’s not even in Uganda anymore. Kevin thinks it might actually be _hotter_ , but they still don’t turn the air conditioning on. There are some comforts that Kevin learned to live without. Connor still boils soup in a pan because he grew up without a microwave, and he says he thinks it might be kind of like that. The sound of the washing machine buzzes through the floor and makes Kevin agitated. There’s so many cars, and they’re so noisy at night that Kevin sleeps even worse than he did before. Sometimes, just _sometimes_ , he lights a candle instead of leaving the lights on. It’s the guilt, he tells Connor one sleepless night. Who needs a microwave, or a washing machine, or air conditioning, when his kids are still in Uganda, still living with barely any home comforts? Some of them don’t even have a home in the first place. Nabulungi promised him that they would use the abandoned mission hut to home them, but that doesn’t really make him feel any better.

He eventually gets used to watching TV again, but he doesn’t necessarily enjoy it. All he can think about is how Nabulungi would love laying down on the couch with her head in Kevin’s lap watching cartoons (he just _knows_ she would love the bright colours. She would probably touch the screen, reverently, and then proceed to not shut up about it for days). He has to turn it off when he sees an advert about starving children in Africa, and he definitely doesn’t cry in the bathroom for the rest of the ad break, as he insists to Connor’s half concerned, half amused face.

“I thought it would be the little things I missed,” Kevin tells Connor when he forces Kevin out for ice cream. Connor’s double-chocolate affair has melted all down his fingers and he has to try really, really hard not to watch him lick it off, childishly. “But I didn’t really miss any of it.”

“Do you want to go back?” says Connor, with chocolate all around his mouth. He grins when he catches Kevin staring.

“No,” Kevin shakes his head. “But isn’t that selfish?”

“Not really,” says Connor. “You used to be selfish. Then you did a complete one-eighty and became the most egotisical altruistic person in the world.”

“Is that when you started to like me?”

“I started to like you when you started to buy me things,” says Connor, happily, biting into the cone. “Look, you bought me this ice cream. Not selfish.”

“That’s not really what I’m talking about,” says Kevin.

“Your tongue has turned blue,” says Connor, instead of answering. Kevin sticks it out and tries to look at over the end of his nose, going cross eyed. Connor laughs, hits him, and finishes his ice cream. “I forgot which way taps turn, if that makes you feel any better.”

It does.

“I don’t know which way a switch is on or off.”

“The first time I used shampoo again, I used way too much and it was in my hair for days.”

“I remember that,” says Kevin. Connor slips his arm into the crook of Kevin’s elbow. “You looked ridiculous.”

“It’ll get easier,” Connor tells him. “But you really have to stop washing your clothes in the bathtub.”

“Anything for you,” says Kevin, and Connor _beams_ at him.

“Likewise,” he says.

At least he doesn’t have to miss Connor, he thinks. If Connor was just another memory in Uganda – well, Kevin would have a much harder time with that than he does with the washing machine.


	5. Coming Home / Odds and Ends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was heavily inspired by Sydney Carton Doesn't Have Shit On Me by worrylesswritemore, aka my favourite mcpriceley fic, aka you should all go read that instead of this probably.

It’s not that Elder Price has gone _missing_. He’s just – been misplaced.

He and Arnold set off three days ago to go get their mail, and they should have only been gone for one night, but now it’s been _three_ nights. Elder McKinley frets about it, then worries, and then, finally, panics.

Connor takes up camp on the sofa – _just in case_ – and watches the door for hours. He eventually falls asleep, thinking about Elder Price and Elder Price’s hands and arms and how much he kind of actually really misses him when he’s alone in the middle of the night and doesn’t have the surety of Kevin’s presence, to be a real person, a solid thing that Connor can grasp onto, who practices breathing exercises with him and sometimes holds his hand.

That same hand clamps over his mouth in the middle of the night. Connor wakes up, and promptly starts to freak out.

“Sh,” says a voice. “It’s me.”

“Elder _Price_ ,” says Connor, when Kevin drops his hand. He fumbles with the matches until he’s managed to light the candle and – oh, yes, that _is_ Elder Price, and he looks worryingly dishevelled and alarmingly attractive because of it. His big eyes glint in the candlelight and his cheek has dirt all over it. Connor can’t help it – out of habit, because he’s half asleep and wildly in love with the beautiful idiot, reaches out and touches his face, but forgets to rub the dirt off.

“Hi,” Kevin grins. Connor stares at him. It’s not fair. He’s just woken up, and he’s high-strung from three days of worrying, and he’s so _happy_ to see Kevin. Of course his stupid smile is going to make Connor tongue-tied and incoherent.

“I have been up _all night_ ,” Connor admonishes. “Because I was too busy worrying about you, and I finally sleep for half an hour, and then you _burst in here_ and _wake me up._ ”

“Sorry,” says Kevin, not looking very sorry at all. “There was a big accident, we got delayed. We had to stay in a hotel and everything.”

“But you’re – okay?”

“Yes,” says Kevin, coming closer. Connor remembers to drop his hand, finally, and feels himself turning pink. He doesn’t think that the dim light will give him away, but he’s mad at himself anyway for being so obvious. “Are you?”

“I am _now_ ,” says Connor. “Now I know you’re actually alive.”

“I thought I was the dramatic one,” says Kevin. “I brought you back a present.”

“You – what?”

“I bought you a present,” says Kevin. “Here.”

He brandishes a notebook, and there’s nothing particularly special about it but Connor’s heart swells anyway.

“Oh,” says Connor, rubbing his eyes.

“It’s a journal,” says Kevin. “Because your old one ran out, and I thought, well, it’s not like the mission president is going to send you a new one, and I know it was bothering you that you couldn’t make your notes and lists and things, and –“

“Shut up,” says Connor.

“Okay,” Kevin agrees, easily enough. He sits and watches Connor’s face for a moment, which is very distracting when Connor is trying to process something.

“Did you, uh. Get anything for anyone else?”

“Nope,” says Kevin, happily. “You’re special.”

“I am?” says Connor, even though he kind of already knew that Kevin might like him just a _teeny_ bit more than the others, just because he can be so intense around him. Exactly like he is right now. The look in Kevin’s eyes is surprisingly dark.

“I don’t know how to make it any more obvious,” says Kevin, shaking his head slightly. His hair flops down into his eyes and Connor is absolutely mesmerised by the way his mouth twitches, almost like he’s amused. “No, seriously, I really don’t, because I have been flirting with you for _months_ , and I didn’t intend on making a speech right now, I swear I didn’t, but you look so cute when you’re sleepy and I actually missed you a lot and I kept thinking, I bet Elder McKinley is going out of his mind worrying about me right now, and that made me think, nobody ever really worries about me, they’re mostly just annoyed or disappointed, and –“

“Kevin,” Connor says. “I’m probably going to fill this journal with little doodles of you and hearts everywhere and talk excessively about how the way your hair falls into your eyes makes me die a little inside.”

“Cool,” says Kevin, unphased, and he leans forward, and, and –

He kisses him, and Connor doesn’t see stars or anything, but he does feel sick in a kind of good way and his brain shuts down entirely because he’s wanted this for so long. Kevin curls his fingers in the little hairs at the base of Connor’s neck, and Connor’s hand grows a mind of its own and lands somewhere on Kevin’s chest. It’s deliciously firm and he’s clearly not wearing his temple garments.

“You’re alive, right?” says Connor. “Like, you didn’t die horribly and I’m having some kind of nice dream to make up for it?”

“Definitely alive,” Kevin mumbles against Connor’s lips, impatiently trying to kiss him again. “And stupid for you.”

“Oh,” says Connor, and sticks his tongue in Kevin’s mouth instead of giving him a horrifically embarrassing answer, like _I thought I was going to lose my mind_ and _I’m so madly in love with you I feel like I’m going to throw up every time I look at your ridiculous, perfect face_. “Why now?”

“Absence really does make the heart grow fonder, I reckon,” says Kevin. Connor smiles. It really does.


	6. Waiting / All I Ask

Connor flies back home on a tuesday.

Well, not _home_ home. He checks into a hotel and stays there for three weeks until he finds a roommate who doesn’t care that he doesn’t have a job yet. The guy kind of sucks, and he’s pretty preachy about how Connor did the right thing excommunicating himself, and his little late-morning speeches while he waits for the coffee to boil remind him so much of Kevin that Connor’s heart burns.

Elder Price asked him to wait. So he waits.

He thinks about what Kevin might be up to. He constantly calculates the time difference and gets a little sad every time it’s three am in Uganda and he thinks about how Kevin is probably wide-awake on the sofa without him. Connor was the last one to leave, before Kevin and Arnold, lingering as long as he could before he didn’t have an excuse anymore and there wasn’t go to be a bus to the airport for another three weeks. They’re just tying up loose ends, Arnold says, but Connor is pretty certain those ends will never be tied and he’s terrified that Prophet Cunningham will be the one who gets to keep Elder Price.

Wait for me, Kevin had said. _For me_. Connor plays and replays those two little words so often Kevin’s voice becomes a distorted projection and after a while he kind of forgets what he looks and sounds like. It’s not like he has any pictures, or phone number to call, or even an address to write a letter to. So he waits and waits and waits.

There are some things to fill his time, though, like eating as much as ice cream as he physically can and turning the AC all the way up and leaving every light on in the apartment because he _can_ so he will. He can watch movies and use an actual working phone and he’s not covered in possibly fatal bug bites and the spiders here are laughably small. But he’s always been a pretty good multi-tasker, so he manages to find the time to do whatever he wants at the same time as doing something that feels suspiciously like - but is absolutely _not_ \- pining.

It’s not like they were - anything, really. They would bicker and fight and Kevin would always steal spoonfuls of his matoke in the morning when he thought Connor couldn’t see and they would spend miserable nights alone together and Connor was madly, wildly in love with him. That doesn’t mean anything. It’s not like there were any kisses in the garden shed or clothes taken off or declarations made - no, those were only elaborate fantasies. But Kevin had said wait for me and there’s no way to misinterpret that, right?

He waits. He’s not sure Kevin is coming back at all but he made a promise and Kevin had seemed so intense when he said it and there were no goodbye kisses but Kevin’s lips _did_ ghost so close to the shell of his ear when he hugged him and he’s pretty certain Kevin said _I’ll miss you_ but he can’t be totally sure, and, and -

He feels pathetic. He is pathetic.

Why don’t you date? His roommate asked him. Connor didn’t really have an answer. _There’s a beautiful idiot who I maybe possibly have a chance with but I haven’t heard from him in three months and he may be living in a third-world country for the rest of his life and I would have no idea if he was still there or if he’d come back to America and decided that he would keep me as a memory as alien as Uganda was_ isn’t really an excuse.

He waits and waits and waits and waits and torments himself every night with a new kind of nightmare, filled with coffee dates and soft kisses and whispers of _I missed you_ and _don’t leave me again_.

When Kevin flies back, it’s on a Thursday.

He shows up to Connor’s apartment on a Monday and the first thing Kevin says is, “you didn’t leave an address or a phone number,” and then he leans in and grabs Connor’s face and kisses him before he has the chance to say hi.

“You waited,” says Kevin, as a statement and not as a question.

“Obviously,” is all Connor can think to say, and he rolls his eyes and Kevin grins at him and he looks even more tanned and his eyes are bigger than Connor remembered and he’s such a ridiculously beautiful specimen that Connor suddenly finds himself unable to not touch him everywhere he can. Just to make sure.

“Thank you,” says Kevin, and he sounds and looks different to the Elder Price Connor envisioned obsessively for months but he’s perfect because he’s real and he’s his.


	7. Blood

The only thing that Kevin really hates about Uganda – other than the obvious – is the crushing reality that he’s not really as brave or strong as he thought he was. For one, he spends a huge chunk of his time obsessively checking every surface for spiders, and another huge chunk running away from spiders. If he thought moving to a third world country for two years to spread the word of God was brave - if what he did with the General was, in its own, entirely regrettable way, brave – he clearly hadn’t met the Giant Crab Spider yet. Even Church suggested burning down Neeley and Michaels’ room when one found its way in through the window. Of course, Nabulungi – beautiful, blessed Nabulungi – killed it and buried it outside, where ‘it can’t hurt anyone, Elder Price’. Kevin couldn’t sleep for days afterwards, tormented by hairy legs and too many eyes and pincers and huge brown and black blobs in his peripheral vision. Not so brave. Emotionally, he’s as weak as a kitten. A very handsome and charming kitten, but he’s not holding his breath on suddenly gaining the emotional ability to compartmentalise any time soon.

He’s also discovered that he has a very real fear of pan fried grasshoppers (it’s a _delicacy_ , apparently, according to literally everybody but Kevin), guns, total darkness, the many, many thunderstorms, and blood. Which brings him to his latest and most immediate problem: Elder McKinley has managed to slice his hand open on a broken bowl, and there’s little red blobs all over his pants and the floor and the counter, and Kevin feels like he’s about to faint at any moment.

“It isn’t that bad,” says Elder McKinley, rolling his eyes.

“Aren’t I supposed to be telling you that,” says Kevin, finding himself suddenly weak at the knees and sitting down on a chair before he’s even processed how dizzy he feels. “There’s so much blood.”

“I’ve done worse,” says Elder McKinley. “Help me clean it off, you chicken.”

Kevin is about to protest that he is absolutely _not_ a chicken, but Elder McKinley raises his eyebrows at him in the exact same way he did the last time there was a thunderstorm and Kevin hid under the table until it passed, and he’s painfully reminded of his inability to lie. Stupid, sheltered Mormon upbringing and aversion to risk taking which has not prepared him for any situation involving blood.

“I don’t know first aid,” says Kevin.

“I only cut my hand, I’m not dying,” says Elder McKinley. “We have like, eight boxes of antiseptic wipes Church’s mom sent over. Think you can handle fetching and opening a tiny little packet?”

Kevin glares at him. At least everybody else feels too awkward to call Elder Price out most of the time, but Elder McKinley has decided to make it his personal mission to be condescending to Kevin until he grows a backbone. Kevin finds this both very rude and very helpful.

“Hand,” he says, half-closing his eyes as the blood drips down Elder McKinley’s wrist. “This actually does look quite bad, you know.”

“I mean, it hurts,” says Elder McKinley. “But laughter is the best medicine, and the look on your face is priceless.”

Kevin wipes the blood up as gently as he can and tries not to throw up. It’s very red and there really is quite a lot of it, reminding Kevin of his own mortality and sending him spiraling into the pit of despair he usually saves just for the aforementioned Giant Crab Spider.

“You’re like a little robot sometimes,” says Kevin. “You’re in love with rules and barking out orders and you never get emotional about anything. Surprised to find you bleed at all.”

Elder McKinley hums and watches Kevin’s hand. The wipe travels down the side of Connor’s palm and onto his wrist, where Kevin is gripping his peeling, sunburned skin. Kevin accidentally catches his eye and suddenly his hand sizzles with an electric current and the moment feels heavy and intense and Kevin wonders, idly, if Elder McKinley can feel it too. Kevin breaks eye contact first, and really regrets it, because the wound on Connor’s palm is still open and still bleeding.

“Bandage,” Elder McKinley reminds him. Kevin’s head spins.

“Right,” he says. He wraps the cloth around Elder McKinley’s hand as many times as it’ll fit and tucks it under itself. “There you go.”

“Aren’t you a brave little toaster,” says Elder McKinley, inspecting Kevin’s handiwork. “Exposure therapy. How do you feel?”

“Very, very nauseous,” says Kevin. Elder McKinley grins at him, all of a sudden, and Kevin’s heart might actually stop for a second because he can’t feel it beating at all.

“Thanks for patching me up,” says Elder McKinley. “It means a lot that you didn’t immediately go running for Arnold.”

“Hey,” Kevin protests, weakly. “Just because I’m a coward doesn’t mean I can’t help a friend.”

“You’re not really a coward,” says Elder McKinley, in his softest, rarest voice. “Doing something even though you’re absolutely terrified of it is pretty brave. In my opinion, anyway, if that counts for anything.”

“It counts the most,” says Kevin, still feeling weak and not thinking properly. “I probably wouldn’t have done that for anybody but you.”

Elder McKinley cocks his head to the side in that way that he does and gives Kevin a dark look.

“I’m going to be brave too,” he says.

“Good for you,” says Kevin, before Elder McKinley attaches himself to Kevin’s mouth and curls his fingers – along with his bandaged hand – around the back of Kevin’s head. Kevin is momentarily surprised, but he’s not scared at all, because his brain has overheated and the wires that connect to his mouth have short-circuited so he doesn’t really think about anything, just kisses him back instinctively, and then on purpose once he catches up with exactly what is happening right now.

“You are brave,” says Kevin, when Elder McKinley pulls back. “Isn’t having feelings for a guy like, your number one fear?”

Elder McKinley grins at him. Kevin stares at his mouth, then kisses it again.

“Pretty certain you’re more afraid of spiders than I am of you,” says Elder McKinley.

Kevin doesn’t think about blood or deadly bugs or thunderstorms at all – just soft kisses and freckles and Connor’s smirking mouth.


	8. Tongue-tied

Connor, who is usually a particularly articulate person (if he does say so himself), is having a communication problem. To be more specific, he’s having a communication problem with Elder Price. To be even more specific than that, the problem at hand seems to be that words like _Christ, you’re handsome_ or _I literally want to kiss you all over_ or _wanna go get coffee?_ are stuck behind his lips and in between his teeth and he absolutely must not under any circumstances open his mouth and tell Elder Price that _you’re such an incredibly beautiful specimen of a human being that I’m half-convinced you’re not even real_. He wants to say, _I didn’t even know I had a type and I can’t believe that my first, honest-to-God, crush on a boy that I don’t hate myself for is for you, the one person I would literally never have a chance with and if you could stop doing that thing with your hands in your hair I’d really appreciate it._

It’s embarrassing.

It’s more than embarrassing. It is, to be perfectly frank, absolutely humiliating. He’s Elder McKinley. He is put together and unflappable, a stickler for rules (even if it is just because they’re fun to break). For such a stiff person, Elder Price sure does make Connor real gooey. He might as well melt into a puddle on the floor whenever he’s in the room. Which is why he tries his best to not be in his presence at any given moment of the day. It’s better for everyone, he’s decided. Having a human-shaped District Leader is more favourable than a pile of lovesick mush.

Elder Price, however, does not seem particularly happy about it. It’s not like Connor is being subtle, to be fair to him. Just today he walked into a room, saw Elder Price was there, almost blurted _your hair looks ridiculous and I kind of want to pull it_ , and promptly walked out. He knows that saying things out loud that you meant to think is something that only happens in books, but that doesn’t stop him from being deathly afraid when he has a particularly coherent thought about the shape of Elder Price’s mouth.

He trained for this: how to persuade, how to deal with difficult people (and _boy_ , is Elder Price a difficult person), how to keep people interested in what you say, particular words to use. But it’s not like anything else he was taught turned out to be useful. Never allow your appearance or your behaviour to draw attention away from your message, his bishop recited to him before his mission. Like, six or seven times. He’s not stupid, he knew what he was talking about – people have used the words _behaviour_ or _lifestyle_ or _little issue_ his entire life. His entire problem is now the opposite of that. His behaviour, as it were, is broadcasting Connor’s messages like beacons of light in the sky and he’s hoping that Elder Price’s head is too far up his own ass to notice.

As it turns out, Elder McKinley, once again, is not so lucky.

Connor walks into the living area late at night to get a bottle of water, sees Elder Price curled up on the couch, and tries to sneak away unnoticed.

“Do you have a problem with me?” says a weary-sounding Kevin. Connor freezes.

“Um,” says Connor, skidding around on his heel and hoping that the dim candlelight hides how pink Connor’s ears feel. “I don’t think you want to know the answer to that question.”

“What does that mean?”

“Curiosity killed the cat, Elder Price,” Connor says, edging backwards towards the door, wondering what would happen if he literally just turned around and ran away in the middle of this already incredibly painful conversation.

“But satisfaction brought it back.”

Connor’s shoulders slump.

“It’s embarrassing,” says Connor.

“McKinley,” says Elder Price. “I have absolutely humiliated myself more times than I care to count since I got here. Which you already know. And have told me several times. You said it was 'good for my character development.'”

If Connor needed further proof that he should keep his mouth shut at absolutely all times, he now has concrete evidence. To heck with rules, he thinks, even if they are arbitrary and fragile ones that he’s set for himself to avoid this exact situation.

“I like you,” Connor says, as quickly as possible.

“What?”

“Forget it,” says Connor, and he means to turn around and leave and pretend this was just another Hell dream but he somehow ends up frozen to the spot.

“No, I heard you,” says Elder Price. “Is that what you’re so embarrassed about?”

“I mean,” says Connor. “Obviously.”

“Oh, I already knew that,” says Elder Price. Connor stares at him with his mouth so wide open he could swallow a whole swarm of flies. “I’ve been trying to talk to you about it for ages but you keep avoiding me.”

“Oh,” says Connor. “I just get so tongue-tied around you.”

“I could make you a different kind of tongue-tied,” says Elder Price, whose face splits open into a shit-eating grin. His eyes look tired but his smile is bright and enthusiastic.

“That’s horrible,” says Connor, but he ends up sitting on the edge on the sofa anyway, pointedly not making any kind of physical contact. Elder Price sighs – dramatically, because Elder Price is nothing but theatrical – and pulls Connor down towards him. “Um.”

“Words,” says Elder Price, looking mischievous in a way Connor has never seen before. “Use them.”

Fuck it, thinks Connor.

“You’re so incredibly handsome every time I look at you I die a little inside,” he says. “Also I might be in love with you? I’m not quite sure yet. I haven’t exactly been able to test this theory. And anyway I haven’t said anything because it’s not like I knew you’d be quite this receptive to it, and can you imagine how embarrassing it would be if I accidentally said something like, I don’t know, I want to stick my face in your neck and see what happens when I kiss you under your ear or something. Also –“

“I changed my mind,” says Elder Price. “Shut up.”

He pulls Connor in for a kiss, and Connor literally melts all over the sofa. He’s going to leave a stain, probably, his mind thinks absently before he stops thinking altogether. There’s a different way he can communicate with Elder Price, he’s just discovered, and it’s much nicer than stupid words.


	9. Schadenfreude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy holidays everybody, from myself and from my boys!!

“It’s Christmas,” says Kevin.

“Obviously,” says Connor, rolling his eyes.

“Christmas traditions,” says Kevin. “And all that. You know.”

Kevin fidgets with his fingers behind his back. It’s mid-afternoon, and the sun is shining and it’s far too warm for Christmas day. Connor smiles at him, sweetly, a devilish and almost frightening glint in his eye.

“You want to go carol singing?”

“Literally never wanted to do anything less in my life,” says Kevin.

“Well, it’s not time for presents or dinner yet,” says Connor, slowly, tapping his fingers on his chin. “We’re not exactly going to pray today, are we? I just cannot think what you might be talking about.”

“You’re the worst person alive,” says Kevin, happily, the mistletoe in his hands itching his palms.

“Merry Christmas to you too,” says Connor. “It’s too hot for Eggnog. And let’s face it, we can’t exactly watch A Christmas Story.”

“Why are you like this?” Kevin laments. His hands are sweaty and he feels something brush the inside of his rib cage that feels both amused and indignant.

“Because you’re an idiot,” says Connor. “Oh, look. Neeley’s coming. Why don’t you show him whatever it is you’re hiding behind your back?”

“Oh,” says Kevin. “Oh, no, that’s quite alright -”

“Kevin has a present for you,” says an overly gleeful Connor, before striding away as if he has places to be, which Kevin knows he absolutely does _not_. He takes one look at Neeley’s inquisitive face, allows his eyes to flicker down to his lips for the briefest of seconds, and bolts inside, mistletoe still clutched in his hands.

He tries next after dinner.

“You know,” says Kevin, softly, so hopefully only Connor can hear. “I have a present for you.”

“Do you now,” says Connor. “Oh, I didn’t get you anything.”

Connor actually _pouts_. He didn’t even know it was possible to pout whilst grinning. Kevin wants to bite it off his face.

“That’s okay,” says Kevin. “You can make it up to me later.”

Connor raises one eyebrow, the other following soon after.

“Go on, then. What did you get me?”

“I can’t show you _here_ ,” says Kevin.

“No,” says Connor, shaking his head. “I think we should share with the class. It’s Christmas, Elder Price. It’s all about family, remember?”

“I hate you,” says Kevin.

“Nah,” says Connor, looking as impish as ever. “You love me.”

Kevin turns and stalks away, muttering to himself about _stupid Connor_ and _stupid word games_ and _stupid Christmas_.

So he tries again, as the evening is dwindling down and long after the sun has set. He taps Connor on the shoulder, hand shoved in his pocket, fingers wrapped around the spiky mistletoe. He’s probably crushed it in his clammy palms already. It wasn’t exactly easy to find, but Connor isn’t exactly an easy person.

“Elder McKinley,” he says. “Can I talk to you in private about something?”

Connor tilts his head back over the couch, looking at him upside down. Kevin wants to lean down and kiss his ridiculous, mischievous mouth. He’s pretty certain that’s what Connor wants, too, if the dark look in his eyes is anything to go by, but that doesn’t mean Connor isn’t going to make a big song and dance about the whole fiasco. He always has been a drama queen.

“Do you have a problem, Elder Price?”

“In a way,” says Kevin.

“Well,” says Connor. “I’m busy. Why doesn’t Church help you? He’s very practical. Hey, Church -”

“Oh my God,” says Kevin. “No, I don’t - Church, _sit down_ \- this is something only you can help with.”

“Nonsense,” says Connor, brightly. “A problem shared is a problem halved, so if you tell all of us, your problem will be divided into _eighths_ , which is really quite manageable -”

“Forget it,” says Kevin. He doesn’t feel like he’s having fun anymore. Connor seems to notice, because he twists on the couch and opens his mouth, but Kevin has left without a word before Connor can make a sound.

He sits down on the edge of his bed, and allows himself to be consumed by self-pity. He lays down and feels sorry for himself until a shadow appears in his doorway.

“Knock knock,” says Connor.

“It’s not Christmas anymore,” says Kevin, checking his watch.

“I know,” says Connor. “It’s just so fun to watch you squirm.”

Kevin sits up, clutching the bedsheets, and blinks sleepily at him.

“You can still give me your present,” says Connor. “If you wanted.”

“I can’t,” says Kevin, pulling the mangled mess of mistletoe out of his pocket. “It got ruined.”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s not like that was the present. Just the gift tag, I suppose.”

“You suppose,” says Kevin.

“Kevin, will you shut up and kiss me already?”

“Oh,” says Kevin. “I mean, well, yes, obviously, but I was all _prepared_ before, and now it’s not right, you know, I had it all planned, and -”

Connor kisses him, and Kevin still mumbles into his mouth a little out of shock, but his brain soon catches up with his tongue.

It takes Kevin a moment - and a singular hand on the back of his neck, running fingers through the short hairs there - before he realises what Connor’s doing. He pulls back, and Connor follows his lips with a small, keening noise, and Kevin looks up. Above their heads, Connor is holding a small sprig of mistletoe.

“It’s so hard to find in Uganda,” says Connor, giving Kevin his most crooked and mischievous grin.

Kevin takes Connor’s outstretched hand in his own, the mistletoe forgotten and crushed between their palms.

“Merry Christmas,” says Connor. “You idiot.”

Kevin kisses him again, and then again, and then again and again. He’s learned a lot of new Christmas traditions in Uganda, but this is definitely one he’s going to keep.


	10. Grinding

Kevin was sent here to do God’s work. Turns out God isn’t real, and Kevin still has to work. Go figure.

He doesn’t mind it. He pretends to, but he doesn’t really. He has one of the better jobs – teaching is much, much more preferable than the manual labour Connor has Church and Davis do – but at the end of the day he still puts in more overtime hours than everybody else. It’s just that some of the kids don’t have homes to go to, so he lets the smaller ones crawl on his back or cling to his leg, or he oversees play time after class, because if nobody else will look after the little shits, then Kevin sure will.

He doesn’t really know how to – well, turn it off. Work is only thing that keeps Kevin sane. He has a _purpose_ again; if that purpose is making sure Birungi doesn’t strangle Nafuna with a jump rope, so be it. At least it gives Kevin something to do. He’s been mostly banned from board game nights and playing his hundredth round of solitaire felt so incredibly sad that he can barely look at a deck of cards anymore. There aren’t any parties coming up, which is Kevin’s favourite way to pass the time and let off some steam that’s been bottled up deep inside his chest somewhere and aging like a fine wine. Arnold and Nabulungi are usually mysteriously absent, and he _did_ read in the in-flight magazine that you can’t expect to see your friends for a good six months into a new relationship. So: he’s bored, he’s wound up and tense, and he has a very large and distracting problem that he is doing his very best to ignore.

“You work too hard,” says the very large and distracting problem, startling Kevin from his reverie, placing a hand on his shoulder that burns a hole in Kevin’s t-shirt.

“Hardly,” Kevin says.

“You’ve been hanging out with the kids for like, nine hours,” Connor says.

“Really?” says Kevin, a little surprised. He supposes he has been out here for a long time.

“And you just know when you come home you’re going to spend another two hours researching how we’re going to get rehydration mixtures or something,” says Connor. He rolls his eyes. Kevin glares at him.

“It’s not like there’s anything else to do,” says Kevin. “And anyway I have the whole rest of my life to do whatever I want. I came here to work twelve hours a day, so I’ll work twelve hours a day.”

“The whole point,” says Connor. “Was that we weren’t going to do any of that bullshit anymore.”

“I know,” says Kevin. “That one’s on me, I know. But the kids need me.”

“You need sleep,” says Connor. “When’s your play time?”

“Right now,” says Kevin. Komushana wanders over on her very small pudgy legs and Kevin lifts her the rest of the way. He blows a raspberry in her face and she gives a feeble imitation back. Connor gives him a look.

“You know they’re not actually your children, right?”

“Yes, they are,” says Kevin, bouncing Komushana on his knee. “In a way.”

“I don’t want to fight with you,” says Connor.

“You always want to fight with me,” Kevin says.

“That’s only partly true.”

It would help if Kevin’s very large and distracting problem didn’t look quite so cute and if his eyes could just be a _little_ less blue today, Kevin would really appreciate it. He can never be quite sure if Connor is attracted to him – he assumes that most people are, because, well, he’s Elder Price, but Connor is a closed journal with a lock on it, and he knows that Connor would be so mad at him if he assumed that Connor was attracted to him just because of _his_ very large and distracting problem.

“I just want you to come home every once in a while,” says Connor.

“Okay, off you go,” Kevin nudges Komushana off his lap. “Mommy and Daddy need to talk.”

She waddles off towards the other girls and Kevin feels a swell of pride when she only falls over once.

“Mommy and Daddy?”

“Don’t worry,” says Kevin. “You’re the distant father.”

“I don’t _dislike_ children,” says Connor.

“Yes, you do,” says Kevin, because Connor does, quite clearly and obviously, as he wrinkles his nose at the girls’ very loud song.

“Well, they take up all your attention.”

Kevin looks at Connor, who doesn’t seem to realise he’s being weird and confusing and making Kevin’s problem even bigger and even more distracting.

“Do you want me to pay attention to you?”

Connor doesn’t say anything, just sits down next to Kevin and rests his cheek on his shoulder.

“I don’t really know how to make it any more obvious,” says Connor.

“Oh,” says Kevin.

“I hate to feed your ego,” says Connor. “But you’re pretty much my favourite person ever. And it feels a lot like you’re ignoring me, sometimes.”

“Maybe,” says Kevin, not seeing the point in lying. “I have good reason, though.”

“Do you?”

“Sort of,” says Kevin. “I’m not avoiding you. I’m avoiding a problem.”

“I think,” says Connor, slowly. “I might know what the solution is.”

He slides his hand into Kevin’s, and Kevin can actually feel his heart stop.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” says Connor.

Kevin thinks: you’re still going to be a very large and distracting problem, Connor McKinley, but I might just know how to solve you.


	11. Hourglass

It’s a Sunday when Kevin breaks down _._

The irony isn’t lost on him. Still; it’s an afternoon, and the sun is shining, birds are singing, life goes on. Class is over for the day, the same way it ends every day. Everything ends, thinks Kevin, morosely, lying flat on his back under a tree far out enough that he assumes nobody will find him. That’s the way he likes it, these days. Kevin counts two, three, then out two, three, four. Arnold says his therapist taught him how to breathe properly in their first session, but Arnold also says that his therapist gave him a glow in the dark X-Files clock and stickers every other session when Arnold has managed not to lie to her, so Kevin isn’t entirely sure on her ability to practice medicine. Still, it’s all he has; he’s too self-conscious, these days, since he learned his lesson, to _open up_ about his problems. He’ll settle for breathing techniques and trying to nap until his headache stops throbbing. Elder McKinley gives him this little disapproving look that he _never_ gives anyone else when Kevin disappears for hours, and Kevin knows that Elder McKinley knows that he was too busy trying to not spectacularly freak out on everyone that he missed dinner. Again.

He acts like a housewife, sometimes, and it irritates Kevin to no end. So what if Kevin wasn’t there at dinner? So what if he didn’t do all of his chores that day, or if he bickered with Neeley until he was red in the face from irritation. Who cares about Kevin at all? He can do what he likes. Isn’t that the _point_ of all of this? Elder Price doesn’t exist anymore, but Elder McKinley sure as Hell does. He still follows all sorts of rules, is a stickler for some of them, really – he wakes up early, still, and admonishes Arnold every other day for sleeping in past noon. He is a firm believer in routine, something which Kevin is absolutely not. He’s not really a firm believer in anything. Not anymore.  

He’s aware that he’s having some kind of delayed teenage rebellion, despite the fact he’s almost twenty one, but he’s always been emotionally stunted and anyway he didn’t even know he _could_ rebel before he found himself in the middle of a cult of his best friend’s creation. Then it became all too easy. Elder McKinley says that Kevin’s odd sense of rebellion doesn’t count if his mother isn’t around to see it, but what does he know, anyway? He thinks he knows the answers to the universe, always gets so high-and-mighty when he talks down to Kevin as if he’s an idiot – or worse, a _child_ – and when Kevin tells him to shut up he barely even reacts, just smirks at him and moves on serenely as if they hadn’t had the conversation at all. He’s so weird. Kevin just cannot, for the life of him, figure Elder McKinley out. 

It’s not totally irrelevant to distract himself by thinking about Elder McKinley. He’s actually quite a large part of the problem, not that Kevin would ever _admit_ that. The problem isn’t necessarily that Kevin can’t figure him out. He finds it oddly enjoyable, really; he might be insufferable, but at least he’s interesting. It’s been almost two years and yet Kevin is just as baffled as Elder Price was. The problem is that it’s a Sunday, and there’s really not all that many Sundays left. One of the issues this bottom-heavy hourglass raises is that it means that he’s rapidly running out of time to finally solve the puzzle that’s been bothering him for over a year: is Elder McKinley _attracted_ to him? 

He’s pretty certain that he is. He’s stupid, but he’s not blind, and Connor’s eyes are often suspiciously heart-shaped when Kevin catches him looking, sometimes. Kevin is painfully aware of what he looks like. It’s not like he isn’t accosted by people every time they venture into the city, like he doesn’t notice when people look at him like he’s a particularly delicious and incredibly bad-for-you snack. He’s the human equivalent of junk food. Kevin is instant gratification incarnate. He doesn’t want somebody to _indulge_ in him. 

This is exactly why he’s never broached the subject to find out for sure. Kevin isn’t really a one night stand kind of guy, no matter how many people seem to want him to be, because he’s never what people want him to be. So when McKinley looks at him like that, he’s more than a little wary of his intentions. Kevin has no interest in pursuing somebody who’s going to move hours and hours away from him in a matter of weeks. He’s been pushing confronting him back and back so far that there’s not really much point in – well, in anything anymore. Elder McKinley or not, Kevin has found himself giving lackluster lessons and not bothering to wash anybody’s clothes and haphazardly chopping vegetables with “no regard for their aesthetic integrity,” as Thomas says. Thomas also never shuts up about how excited he is to eat Poptarts again, which is incessantly annoying, so Kevin ignores him and continues turning onions into mush, bringing the knife down onto the table so hard he leaves indents. At least Thomas has got something to look forward to, thinks Kevin, pulling out blades of grass. 

So, it’s a Sunday when Kevin breaks down. It’s also a Sunday when McKinley finds him half-asleep under the tree and kicks him in the side. 

“Ow,” says Kevin, without really meaning it, rolling over to look up at Elder McKinley. 

“You’ve burned one of your legs but not the other,” he says. “You look ridiculous. How many times do I have to tell you not to fall asleep in the sun?”

“How many times do I have to tell you to fuck off?” says Kevin. McKinley, to his credit, doesn’t even blink. He just puts one hand on his hip and cocks his head. 

“You kiss your mother with that mouth?” 

“You swear more than I do,” says Kevin, covering his eyes with his hands so he can glare to the best of his ability. “You hypocrite.” 

“Lies,” says Elder McKinley. “You’re a terrible liar.” 

“Am not,” says Kevin, thinking of all of the times he’s pretending that Elder McKinley hasn’t practically made his heart swoon with his stupid eyes and the stupid way he looks at him, as if Kevin is somehow important, as if Kevin is _worthy_ of being looking at like that. 

“Are too,” says Elder McKinley. He sits down next to Kevin. Kevin sits up, so they’re on equal footing, and instantly regrets it because McKinley takes the opportunity to ruffle his hair, even though he knows Kevin hates it. He probably does it because he knows Kevin hates it. “What’s bothering you?” 

“I don’t want to talk about it.” 

“You always want to talk about it,” says McKinley. “You really are a terrible liar.”

Kevin stays quiet. He doesn’t want to open his big fat mouth. 

“Fine,” says McKinley. “Let’s play a guessing game. If I figure it out, I get a prize.” 

“A prize?” says Kevin, his interest officially piqued at the idea of a competition. 

“Of my choice,” says Elder McKinley. “Are you upset about the fact Arnold has been ignoring you so he can spend every last precious remaining second with Naba?” 

Kevin shakes his head, but doesn’t open his mouth. He’s not too worried. It’s not like Elder McKinley will figure it out. 

“Are you working yourself up over missing everyone when we leave?” 

Kevin shakes his head again. 

“Are you attracted to me?” 

Kevin flops back down onto the grass and closes his eyes. Maybe if he thinks about it hard enough, this will all be a bad dream or a figment of his imagination and when he opens them again Elder McKinley will be back in the mission hut where he can’t bother Kevin anymore with his uncanny ability to read Kevin’s mind. 

“I’ll take your silence as a yes,” says McKinley. “You really shouldn’t let yourself get so worked up about that. You used to give me little speeches about _my_ gay crisis all the time.” 

“I’m not having a gay crisis,” says Kevin. 

“Oh,” says Elder McKinley. “Then what’s the problem?” 

Kevin looks up at McKinley looking down at him with his eyes narrowed and the corner of his lip turned upwards. 

“You are,” says Kevin. 

Elder McKinley, alarmingly, swings his leg over Kevin’s and holds himself up over Kevin with his palms, hovering above him. 

“You owe me a prize,” says McKinley. 

“Three guesses I know what it is,” says Kevin. 

“What will your prize be?” “I want you to stay,” says Kevin, because he’s tired of playing games. “I don’t want you to – you know, with _us,_ and then we go back to America and I never see you again.” 

Connor brushes their noses together, happily. Kevin swallows the lump in his throat and licks his dry, cracking lips. 

“I have waited so long for the opportunity to kiss you senseless,” says Elder McKinley. “So stop being ridiculous and give me my prize.” 

Kevin, for once, takes the hint, curls both his hands in the curled ends of McKinley’s hair, and kisses him. 

“Got it in one,” says Elder McKinley, his hands buckling underneath him, pressing their torsos together. “Now you get your prize, too.” 

“Really?” says Kevin. “And truly,” says McKinley. 

It’s a Sunday when Kevin breaks down. It’s the same Sunday when Kevin has his first kiss; it’s a Sunday when the plane, leaves, too, and it’s a Sunday when Connor turns up at his apartment with his stupid brash suitcase, barges in before Kevin can even say hello, and flops down on the sofa and beckons Kevin over with grabby hands, as if he belongs there.


	12. Fever

Medically speaking, Connor has come down with a serious case of lovesickness. He’s been showing symptoms for a little over a year, but recently it’s developed into an aggressive case of pining. He’s not sure if there’s a treatment. If there is, he’s sure as Hell not going to _ask_ anybody about it. It’s an embarrassing illness to have, for one, and for another it will inevitably lead back to the root cause. Gossip spreads as quickly as the common cold does in a very small, unsanitary mud hut hosting eight young men. Luckily Connor’s particular strain of lovesickness isn’t contagious. Well, lucky might be a strong word. If it _happened_ to spread, maybe cupid’s awful arrow would hit Connor’s particular target, and then they could be lovesick _together_ , and then Connor won’t feel vaguely nauseous every time Elder Price walks into a room. 

It’s not like it only happens when he’s around. It’s sort of an all-the-time chronic heart ache. Over breakfast, doing laundry, on the bus to Kampala, out for a walk. It hits him by surprise in the middle of the night, when he’s not really thinking about anything at all. He’s doing just fine, thank you very much, and he does sleep a lot better these days, even if that’s mostly because he’s absolutely exhausted from carrying a torch around all day, every day. But then there’s nights, too, where sleep has decided it no longer wants to be his friend. Every time he closes his eyes Elder Price’s stupid perfect face is there, smiling at him in that slow, dopey way that he does, a picture-perfect replica of an image that Connor deliberately, painstakingly memorised earlier that day. Most days, actually. He’s always been a little meticulous, and he has a box in his brain detailing all of Price’s smiles, ordered from toothless to most toothy and colour-coded according to emotion. There’s Elder Price’s I’m-so-wound-up-I-start-laughing smile; there’s his angry, sweet smile (which, as he is shamefully proud of, has mostly been reserved for Connor); another smaller, private one that he only seems to use when he thinks nobody is looking, and of course, the classic Elder Price my-teeth-are-blinding smile. That’s the one that really makes Connor’s stomach upset.

Connor didn’t even know that he _had_ a type until Elder Price came along. As it turns out, Connor’s type is drop dead gorgeous and utterly unobtainable. Connor’s ridiculous position as Customer Service Manager of a spiritual cult born out of Mormonism and practiced entirely in Kitguli, Uganda should mean that Connor doesn’t get so wound up by simple things like dimples. He, quite literally, has a religion to keep running smoothly. It’s just that it’s actually really quite hard, to maintain a full-time job that requires a significantly larger amount of overtime hours than literally any other career whilst being chronically ill. He’s light-headed whenever Elder Price even looks at him. He feels dizzy when Price manoeuvres himself around him in the common area with nothing more than a hand on his elbow. One time, Elder McKinley accidentally ran into Middle of the Night Kevin, who is much, much grumpier than Caffeinated Daytime Elder Price. He also wears a lot less clothes. Connor thought he might actually faint when he saw Kevin’s bare chest and the way his uncharacteristic blush spread down his neck and up to the tips of his ears.

His heartbeat is erratic and painful whenever he even _thinks_ about the time Elder Price was in a particularly jubilant mood and held his hand on the walk back from Gotswana’s for approximately one and a half seconds, using both their hands to point at something in the distance that Connor didn’t even pay attention to at the time because _holy shit_ and _this is it, this is the cause of my death_ and _when I die from this can somebody please tell Price it’s all his fault_. It’s incurable. He’s hopeless! He’s about to give up entirely, succumb to the intensity of the illness and hide under the sheets from now until the plane ride home. Either that, or he’s eventually going to physically trip over his own feet in front of Elder Price because he smiled at him with his I-find-you-amusing smile. Maybe he could stumble, just a little, directly into Price’s chest, and then Price might _happen_ to catch him, and their faces would be so close, the grip on Connor’s arm so strong and masculine and, and –

“Why are you staring at me?” says Elder Price. Connor startles.

“I’m not,” says Connor. “Just feeling under the weather. Eat your vegetables, Price, I can see you trying to hide them.”

“Spoilsport,” says Elder Price. “You don’t look well, now you mention it.”

Heart palpitations. A thin sheen of sweat on his forehead. Temperature rising. Elder McKinley is hopelessly, madly in love. And it’s supposed to feel good, right? It’s supposed to be all happily ever afters, or at the very least passionate making out in the tool shed, but it’s not. It’s hilariously humiliating. The butterflies in Connor’s heart feel more like a chest infection than anything else.

“Life isn’t fair, is it?” says Connor, instead of y _ou’re right, you should stay away from me in case I’m contagious!_ , which would have solved the majority of his current problems.

“No,” says Price, easily enough. “It’s not.”

“What do you do,” says Elder McKinley, leaning forward with both elbows on the table. “When you want something you can’t have?”

“Create an entirely new religion,” says Elder Price. Then he grins, and it’s his crooked grin, which is highly ranked on Connor’s top ten list of things that make his heart quite literally stop beating. “What is it that you want, esteemed district leader Elder McKinley?”

The worst thing is that Connor thinks that Kevin knows. It’s very hard to hide the symptoms when you’re as sick as Connor is. He’s tried – really, truly tried – to keep it a secret, but the problem is that sick people often find it difficult to suffer in silence. There’s little things that give you away, like coughing over Church making a joke about Connor’s failed attempts to flirt, or your pupils dilating, or how your eyes glaze over when you look at the object of all of your ill-fated attraction.

“It’s nothing to worry about,” Connor lies. “I’ll get over it.”

Elder Price is giving him a _look_ , and Connor hates when he _looks_ at him like that because it makes Connor feel even more nauseous, if that were possible.

“Can I take your temperature?” says Price, eventually, after a teeth-pulling pause. He looks like he’s in an immense amount of pain. “You look hot today.”

This is it, Connor thinks. This is the cause of his death. Elder Price is flirting with him. Connor has never felt this sick before in his whole life.

“Your bedside manner,” Connor blurts out. “There’s a joke there, somewhere.”

“You really are terrible at flirting,” says Price.

“I haven’t had a lot of practice,” says Connor, slowly. He feels hot. Does he have a fever? He definitely feels like he needs to lay down. “You make me feel quite ill, you know.”

“ _Really_ terrible at flirting,” says Price.

“Shut up,” says Connor. “You’re maddening. I feel like my heart can’t function when you’re in a room. I also almost threw up that one time when you winked at me.”

“I knew that worked,” says Elder Price, practically beaming at him. “It was horribly embarrassing. Arnold made fun of me for weeks.”

Maybe living with this particular illness won’t be as bad as he thought. Pining causes a lot less heart burn when the said subject of pining has been pining back. After all – misery _does_ love company.


	13. House of mirrors / Oasis

Throwing in the missionary uniforms might quite possibly be the best thing that’s happened to Connor McKinley since he decided to give up the ghost and admit to himself that he might want to kiss a boy just a tiny bit, just to see what would happen.

He finds - in Kevin’s eloquent words, not his - that the removal of the shirt and tie ran parallel with the removal of the stick up his ass. Connor personally thinks that it was swapping his tailor-made suit material pants. He tells Kevin as much, because if there’s anything he enjoys more than shorts and lazing on the riverbank fantasising about suspiciously masculine hands, it’s arguing with Elder Price. 

It’s just that he’s so easy to needle. His insecurities are painted on his sleeve and hung up in an art gallery - because, of course, anything to do with Elder Price is worthy of gawking at - and he gets awfully flustered when you tell him he’s having a bad hair day. Connor thinks it’s painfully adorable, but he’s only admitted that to himself, very quietly, when he’s very alone.

“Everybody looks so different in normal clothes,” the aforementioned Elder Price comments one day. He has porridge all over his nose, and a little on his collar, but Elder McKinley isn’t going to say anything because Kevin told him to fuck off this morning when his all-night nap was disrupted by Connor rolling Kevin onto the floor. “Like, Elder Church, for example. Don’t you think he looks kind of ridiculous?”

Church is wearing brown shorts and a green t-shirt emblazoned _kiss me, I’m Irish_. He’s worn it at least three times this week, but as far as Connor is aware, Church’s family are Italian.

“He does look rather like a tree,” Connor agrees. The shirt is a size too small, but Church is built like a particularly sturdy and imposing house, so that’s not really a surprise. The material stretches over his broad shoulders, making him look oddly top-heavy.

“Arnold somehow now comes up to my chin,” Kevin tells him. “Did you notice that?”

Yes, Connor thinks, but he shakes his head. Kevin doesn’t need to know that Connor notices anything about Kevin. As far as Connor is concerned, it would be better for everybody involved if they all just pretended Connor had never laid eyes on the boy. Connor could have saved himself a lot of heartbreak if he’d covered his eyes when Elder Price first burst through the door and wore a blindfold for the rest of his mission. _But his lovely voice_ , says a tiny, traitorous part of his brain, which he promptly tells to shut up. _He’s whiny and annoying_ , Connor counters. The less rational part of his brain, the clumsy one that fell head over heels, slaps him around the back of the head and says _well, now you’ve already looked, you might as well carry on._

Yeah, Connor thinks he can handle that. It’s not like looking at Kevin is a chore or anything. Connor can appreciate his handsomeness without wanting to press him into the ground and lick the skin between his neck and his ear.

“You’re a lot cuter,” says Kevin. “White isn’t really your colour.”

Okay, so maybe Connor can’t appreciate Elder Price’s handsomeness without feeling his fingers itch with the need to push him over, straddle him, and touch his tongue with his tongue. He’s never done it before, and it _does_ look quite fun, if the way Arnold and Nabulungi are anything to go by.  

“You’re shorter,” says Connor, because he knows that -

“Excuse me?”

Connor snorts. Kevin looks positively scandalised. Like he just found out about his mother’s extramarital affair all over again.

“Sandals,” Connor shrugs.

“We’re the same height!”

“Nope,” says Connor. “Didn’t you notice? I got taller, somehow. Maybe a latent growth spurt. I bloomed in the sun.”

“You know,” says Kevin, with a mischievous smile that Connor has seen exactly four times (not that’s he’s keeping count, _shut up_ ). “It would be so easy to make a joke about you being a flower. You just handed it to me on a platter. You’re losing your touch, McKinley.”

Connor scowls. He can feel it, against his will, his face scrunching up and eyes narrowing. It’s like his face has muscle memory; a Pavlovian response to glare at Kevin Price.

“In my professional opinion,” says Connor, sitting up as straight as he can, “you’re a jerk.”

Kevin laughs - like, really laughs, not that weird fake giggle thing he does in the market sometimes that embarasses Connor to no end - and look, Connor’s heart may feel like a pile of mush, but it still seems to be beating jubilantly. He can hear it in his eardrums.

“Don’t you think,” says Kevin, in that slow way that he does where he’s either being contemplative or about to say something he knows will piss Connor off, “everything is so much nicer now?”

It’s not what he expected Kevin to say at all. It’s a little hard to take him seriously when he has dried matoke on the end of his nose, but Kevin isn’t one to get sentimental over nothing, especially not when sober, so he puts on his most District Leader-y face and looks him in the eye.

“Yes,” is all he can really manage to say. He has a hundred, thousand things he wants to say instead, like, _isn’t it beautiful here?_ and _the weather is always so nice_ and _Kevin, I think it’s because you’re much nicer now_.  

Kevin smiles at him, like he knows everything Connor was going to say anyway. He probably does. He’s not much of a talker, usually, but Elder Price talks a lot and - well, Connor has an incessant need to talk back.

“Finally, we agree on something,” says Kevin, looking alarmingly bashful. It’s entirely possible he’s blushing, but he probably just got sunburned.

“You have banana literally all over you,” Connor relents and finally tells him, because Kevin is right, everything is much nicer now, and maybe that means that Connor should be, too.


	14. Snakes and Ladders

Arnold, in all his wisdom, often tells them that _what goes down must come up._ Connor says, _that’s not how the phrase goes,_ and then Kevin hits him around the back of the head with an open palm and says _don’t question the Prophet, jackass._

Connor’s game piece lands on a snake and he travels down two rows. What goes down must come up indeed.

“ _Hali ya hewa ni moto sana_ ,” Connor laments. He grabs Kevin’s hand, because Kevin is always cold, and presses it to his sticky forehead.

“ _Mtoto_ ,” says Kevin, and when Connor opens his eyes he’s greeted by Kevin’s warm, amused eyes. “It’s not too hot and you know it. It’s like 80 degrees or something. Aren’t you from New Jersey?”

“It was winter when I left?” Connor offers.

Kevin snorts and removes his hand from Connor’s forehead. Connor makes a little indignant sound that, in hindsight, he’s rather ashamed of. Kevin pats Connor on the head, fingers lightly twisting the curls around, before leaning back and rolling the dice again.

They’re sat under the window in the little patch of shade where the sunlight never hits. It’s Connor’s favourite spot in all of Kitguli. Kevin’s favourite is by a huge tree near the lake, but that’s a half an hour walk away and Connor thinks that if he steps into the sunlight he might spontaneously combust.

“You’re like a vampire,” says Kevin. “Five.”

Connor moves Kevin’s little piece up five spaces, landing on neither a snake nor a ladder. They have to use monopoly pieces ever since Elder Cunningham used all of them from their entire board game collection to retell Brigham Young’s battle against a warlord aboard the Starship Enterprise. The final showdown was in the brig, of course, and ended rather violently for storytime at Sunday School. Kevin told him in confidence that he thinks little Kamali ate the green one, because she likes to put things in her mouth that shouldn’t be there, and Kevin unfortunately doesn’t have eyes on the back of his head. Connor is extremely glad about that. Two warm, dark eyes are enough. Four would be too much for Connor’s already admittedly weak knees. Kevin always chooses the wheelbarrow. Connor has no idea why. Connor always picks the top hat, because he likes to be fancy.

“You know,” he continues. “Allergic to sunlight. Nocturnal. Dead inside.”

Connor’s mouth curls up into a smile of its own accord. _Traitor,_ he tells it.

“I hate garlic, too,” says Connor, taking the dice off Kevin. Their fingers touch for just a little too long, and Connor’s breath hitches and catches in his throat. He swallows around it and watches Kevin’s eyes flicker to his Adam’s apple. Huh.

“And you never let Naba take your picture,” says Kevin.

“I don’t let you take my picture,” Connor corrects him. “Nabulungi can take as many as she likes.”

“You never let me have any fun,” says Kevin, pouting a little. Connor kind of wants to bite it. He shoves _that_ thought deep, deep down, out of sight out of mind, where it belongs. Never before has he known somebody whose brain repeatedly stabs them in the back. He supposes that’s what he and Kevin have in common. Self-sabotage. Where Connor is consumed by thoughts of whispered touches and suspiciously masculine hands and arms and legs that definitely one-hundred-percent do not belong to a certain egotistical, self-involved idiot with some kind of deathwish, Elder Price seems to often be overwhelmed by flights of fancy which he _absolutely must act on right this second,_ often disappearing for hours and coming back with twigs in his hair like a sheepish dog returning home after running away to chase a rabbit into the woods.

Connor rolls a four.  

“You’ve overtaken me,” says Kevin, moving Connor’s piece for him, up three whole columns. What goes down must come up. “Rude.”  

“Deal with it,” says Connor, and throws the dice at him. Kevin catches it with one hand, like it’s no big thing. God _,_ does he have to make _everything_ seem so effortless?  

Elder Price is the living embodiment of Cunningham’s words, he thinks: he’s often down - _too_ often, if you asked literally anybody in his general vicinity - but when he comes back up, it’s often with force, and he grabs Connor’s shirt by the shoulder and drags him along for the ride. Like the time he got drunk at Kalimba’s birthday party and cried on Connor’s shoulder for a full ten minutes before seemingly getting over it in an instant; minutes later, he had Connor in his grip and was trying to force him to dance. Connor is a much better dancer, and Kevin always gets annoyed every time he discovers over and over again that he has two left feet. Connor lets himself go limp in Kevin’s grasp until Kevin falls over on the floor. What goes up must come down, too. Connor laughed at him for like, two days, every time he spotted the bruise on his temple. Serves him right for being such a moody dick.  

“I will,” says Kevin, rolling a two. “Because now _I’ve_ overtaken _you._ ”  

Up the ladder the wheelbarrow goes; landing on eighty-six.  

“Yeah, but if you roll an odd number you’ll land on a snake again,” says Connor.  

Up and down, down and up, this world is upside down and back to front. There are real snakes here, like the one that got into Neeley’s room through a crack in the floorboard that Connor had to remove, carefully, because he is not a _mtoto_ after all, despite what Kevin likes to say every time he gets sunburned or too hot or doesn’t feel like doing something risky, like climb that tree that Elder Price _has_ to climb or won’t take the fifth beer or whatever scheme Elder Price has come up with for the day. There are ladders too, of course, but the ones Elder McKinley is thinking about are more metaphorical in nature. Uphill climbs that seem almost impossible from the bottom rung; endless steps into the sky; struggling into the great unknown. But maybe Connor is getting carried away. He has a tendency to do that; his mother said he has an overactive imagination. Not like Arnold, of course. Connor keeps _his_ little fantasies to himself, thank you very much. Especially the ones that definitely don’t involve the absolute jerk giving him eyes across the board.  

“Stop looking at me like that,” says Connor. “Give me the dice.”  

They’ve been playing for what seems like hours. The sun is starting to set outside; they’ve been circling around the finishing line for a while now, round and round, up the ladder down the snake, so close to one of their victories. This is how it works, Connor thinks. This is how they work. So close to something, fighting for it, without really knowing what it _is,_ just that there’s something they almost have in their grasp -  

“I’m bored,” says Kevin. “Do you wanna call it a day?”  

They never get there, they never reach the finishing line, never discover what the prize that lurks just beyond their reach. Connor is on the top step of the ladder when Kevin falls down the snake, or vice versa. They’ll never quite make it, Connor thinks.  

“Or,” he suggests, slowly, like he’s afraid Elder Price will startle. “We could actually finish a game for once.”  

“Yeah?” says Kevin, and he says it weirdly breathlessly. Connor has no idea what that means (only, okay, maybe he has a tiny little bit of an idea what it means).  

“Yeah,” says Connor. “One of us needs bragging rights.”  

Connor moves three spaces. Eighty-eight.  

“We’re alone right now,” says Kevin, suddenly, and okay, now his hand is _definitely lingering too long, oh God,_ as he takes the dice off Connor.  

“Your powers of observation will never cease to amaze me,” says Connor. 

Kevin grins. Connor’s heart swoops, down then up.  

“We never get to be alone,” says Kevin.  

Up then down; the words in his throat, coming up but getting stuck, swallowing them back down into the space in his chest where all his unspoken words lay dormant.  

“Do you ever think,” says Kevin, tumbling the dice in his hand but never throwing them. It’s a nervous habit he has, playing with his hands like this. “That we never finish what we start because there’s always people watching?” 

_Okay,_ says Connor’s brain. _Okay, okay, up the ladder, into the Heavens, into the unknown -_

“Elder Price,” says Connor, emphatically, as if he can confess his sins just with the tone of his voice. They can have endless conversations with just their eyebrows, but three little words, I-like-you, seem too much. Kiss-me-please. Up-and-down.  

Kevin rolls the dice. It’s a two. Eighty-eight, the same spot at Connor’s, they’re at a tie, a stalemate, and one of them has to _do something,_ they have to move forward, not up or down but pressing on, following the logical conclusion of this conversation, of the conversations they’ve been having in an increasing frequency for months now.  

Kevin is the one who finally breaks, who takes a step, who puts his foot forward. He leans over, giving Connor plenty of time to freak out, before sliding their mouths together.  

“Mmm,” Connor protests, but his heart isn’t in it.  

“ _Nyamaza_ ,” says Kevin into his mouth. “Shut up.” 

“Okay,” Connor agrees, around Kevin’s tongue. Victory, he thinks. _This_ is what they’ve been waiting for, and oh, why did they wait so _long -_

Up, up, Connor thinks, climbing the ladder with far more athletic prowess than Connor has ever possessed, onto Cloud Nine, the pieces on the board forgotten. 


	15. Pecking Order

Elder Price’s latest scheme is as brilliant as it is ridiculous.

“Pffff,” says Kevin, spluttering after Connor poured water on his face. It goes all over the couch and he’s barely even sorry for the next person who sits on it. “Whazat for?”

“ _Chickens_ ,” says Connor. “In my _garden_.”

Kevin blinks up at him, sleepy and confused, those big dark eyes framed by big dark eyelashes, wide and painfully cute.

“What time is it?”

“The crack of dawn,” says Connor. “Which you would know, if _your_ window was directly at the back of the hut, where you have decided to put no less than seven chickens. In my _garden_. Without asking.”

“They woke you up?”

Connor hits him, right in the torso.

“Chickens!” he says again, because he cannot _believe_ this. He throws his hands up in the air for dramatic effect. Elder Price only responds to the dramatic, so he huffs exaggeratedly and tries to look as incredulous as possible.

“Who’s to say I’m the one who brought the chickens here,” says Kevin. He sits upright, rubbing those painfully cute dark eyes framed by painfully cute dark eyelashes, and his hair looks ridiculous and messy and it’s sticking up at all the wrong angles. The amazing thing is that Kevin doesn’t care that he looks like he was dragged through a bush. Maybe he was. _Chickens_ , for Christ’s sake.

“Elder Price,” says Connor. “When was the last time you did something that wasn’t entirely stupid?”

“The chickens!” Kevin exclaims. “Not stupid. Very smart.”

“Inconvenient and annoying,” says Connor. “And in _my garden_.”

“Oh my God, it is not yours,” says Kevin. “It’s communal. You’re the one always going off about all that love and harmony and community crap.”

Elder McKinley grabs Kevin’s shirt and hauls him up, ignoring Kevin’s little _ow ow ow_ sounds that he knows he’s just putting on because he’s a dick like that.

“You sure you weren’t looking in a mirror? Last I remember just yesterday you were trying to write a sonnet about unity for chapter nine.”

“A limerick,” Kevin corrects him, trying to pry Connor’s fingers off his shirt one by one. It doesn’t work. Connor’s sheer force of stubbornness makes him stronger than he looks. He drags him until Kevin gets the hint and shuffles along with him. “But nothing rhymes with Kitguli.”

“Tomfoolery,” says Connor, without thinking, pushing Kevin out of the door in front of him. Kevin barks out a laugh. It’s a noise than never fails to irritate Elder McKinley’s ears.

“You are literally the only person in the world who would say that,” says Kevin. “ _Tomfoolery_. Who do you think you are?”

“There is a village called Kitguli, where many Elders were up to tomfoolery. The worst Elder is Price, who is not very nice, and – “

“Hey,” says Kevin, and slaps his shoulder. “You are the rudest Mormon I’ve ever met.”

“You’ve clearly never met my mother,” says Connor. He can hear the chickens making noises even from the front of the hut, squawking and clucking incessantly. “I’ll write your stupid poem for you. Literally everything rhymes with Kitguli. You’re just an idiot.”

“You’ve called me that so many times it’s lost all meaning,” says Kevin, happily. “Aren’t you impressed I managed to sneak nine chickens in right under your nose?”

Connor is a little impressed. He’s usually watching Elder Price like a hawk. He says it’s because he can’t be trusted, but. The only person who doesn’t know the real reason is Elder Price himself. Because he’s an idiot.

“Nine?” he says instead.

“Oh yeah,” says Kevin. They approach the coop and Connor kind of wants to knock it over just to show Elder Price exactly how annoyed he is. He doesn’t. They both had to make a blood oath – that ended up with them just putting red paint on their hands, for symbolic effect, because Kevin said it was unsanitary and dangerous and Connor said that he won’t touch Elder Price’s blood because he hates him – to agree that their little _disagreements_ would no longer end up in any physical violence. Connor added fine print to the contract Nabulungi texted them; _verbal threats are okay and often necessary_. “I think two of them are asleep in the hutch. Unless they escaped. Oh, I hope the rooster didn’t get out –“

“Good God,” says Connor, and puts his thumbs to his eyeballs. “You got a rooster. Of course you got a rooster.”

“What, do you think I just wanted nine pets?”

“No?” says Connor, even though he absolutely did.

“The rooster is so we can make more chickens,” says Kevin, bending down to watch one peck at the bars.

“I don’t even want these chickens,” says Connor.

“Tough shit,” says Kevin. “I’m being a productive member of society. I’m a farmer now.”

“Oh dear,” says Connor. “Oh, Kevin. Are you having a mid-life crisis?”

“No,” says Kevin. “Just making sure, you know, we actually have food to eat and don’t starve to death. And can sell. And make money. To buy things. Like, I don’t know. Seeds and equipment to make even more of our own food, and have even more stuff to sell and make money to buy things. But I’m just an idiot, right? What do I know.”

Connor is actually stunned into silence. And he’s usually so good at talking back. Elder McKinley is losing his edge. Elder Price does this sometimes; erratic and eccentric and nonsensical decisions that catch Connor off-guard. Elder Price is a lot of things, but boring isn’t one of them.

“That’s what I thought,” says Kevin. “Do you want to meet Elder Price Jr.?”

He’s already unlatching the wire cage and reaching in to grab the fattest chicken.

“You’re not supposed to name them,” Connor says. “One day you’ll have to eat Elder Price Jr. and you’ll hate it. You’ll probably cry.”

“You know me so well,” says Kevin. Connor does know him so well. “I thought you would take great pleasure in killing the little guy. Symbolic and all that.”

“It’s a girl,” says Connor. “Chickens are girls, Kevin, what kind of farmer are you?”

“It’s a learning curve,” says Kevin, holding the chicken to his chest. It seems to have taken a liking to him, but when Connor reaches out his fingers, Elder Price Jr. tries to eat them.

“Arrgh,” says Connor. “I hate this.”

“That one’s McKinley Jr.,” says Kevin, nodding towards the skinny, kind of ill looking chicken poking her head out of the wooden coop. “Doesn’t she look like you?”

“Never mind,” says Connor. “I just hate you.”

“No you don’t,” says Kevin, and he’s _right_ , the jerk. “You love me.”

“You wish,” says Connor.

“Only in my wildest dreams,” says Kevin, and kisses the chicken on her head. It’s ridiculous to be jealous of a chicken, and yet here Connor is.

It’s amazing, how oblivious Kevin is. Or maybe Connor is just that good at hiding it. He’d always assumed that people just weren’t talking about it because they’re nice like that, and Connor is a very private person who will snap and bite anyone who comes near his secrets. The only person bull-headed enough to try, the only person with no sense of self preservation whatsoever, is Elder Price Sr.

“Why?” says Connor. “Do you dream about me often?”

It’s supposed to be a joke. Kevin doesn’t seem to find it very funny.

“Um,” says Connor, a master of words. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“There once was a jerk called Connor,” says Elder Price. He looks frustrated at himself. He places the chicken back in the coop, frowning, then turns to Connor and says, “Okay, nothing rhymes with Connor.”

“Don’t think too much,” says Connor. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

Elder Price Jr. makes a startling noise and starts flapping her wings. They both peer into the cage, but it seems like she’s having a tantrum over nothing.

“Aw,” says Connor. “She takes after you.”

Kevin hits him.

“I knew you’d hate it,” says Kevin. “Sorry about doing it in secret. Me and Arnold left at like, mid afternoon yesterday and got back after you’d fallen asleep. They kept making all sorts of noise, and you know Arnold, he’s not the most coordinated ex-Mormon in the world, and they were flapping everywhere. Total nightmare. But it didn’t wake you up, so. Mission successful?”

“Don’t make a missionary joke,” says Connor. “And they did wake me up. That’s the point of this argument.”

“Are we arguing?” says Kevin, looking mildly surprised, and maybe a little bit sad. Connor pouts at him.

“I suppose not,” says Connor. “Weird. You did something totally irrational without running it by me first and I’m barely even mad at you right now.”

“Pigs will start flying,” says Kevin, and nudges him with his elbow. “I actually named the rooster McKinley Jr. I was lying about the ugly one.”

“What’s the ugly one called?”

“Poptarts the Second,” Kevin shrugs.

Connor laughs, like, a lot at that, so much that Kevin starts grinning at him like an absolute fool. That smile breaks his heart every time. He is so sure that Kevin doesn’t smile at anyone else like that. He knows because he’s been watching.

“You never laugh,” says Kevin, in awe. “I made you laugh. Like, not a derisive snort or anything. You’re practically giggling.”

Connor shoves him as hard as he can.

“We took a blood oath!” says Kevin, rubbing his upper arm.

Connor looks back to the chickens.

“Why’d you name the rooster after me?”

“Because you’re the leader,” says Kevin. “Dumbass.”

“Oh,” says Connor. “I don’t think - well, most people would, uh. Make me one of the girl ones.”

“Why?” says Kevin, as oblivious as ever.

“Because I’m gay?”

“Are you?” says Kevin, with widened eyes. Connor almost believes him, just for a second. Almost. “I had no idea.”

“Ever observant,” says Connor. “Still I’m just - very grateful, actually. I didn’t realise you, uh. Thought about me like a rooster?”

Connor hates himself so, so much.

“What, bossy and noisy and wakes me up as soon as the sun rises?”

“I am not having a heart-to-heart with you in front of the poultry,” says Connor. “In fact, I’m never going to have a heart-to-heart with you.”

“Shut your lying mouth,” says Kevin, with one of those frightening glints in his eyes that means he has an _idea_. Connor swallows. “We’ve had many heart-to-hearts.”

“It’s not a heart-to-heart if you’re yelling it.”

“Still counts,” says Kevin.

They look at each other for a long, long moment, and Connor doesn’t know why it’s awkward, but it is. The noises of chickens clucking at each other are surprisingly not unwelcome in the uncomfortable silence.

“Listen,” they both say at the same time.

“You go,” says Connor, because he doesn’t have a plan on what to say and his palms feel itchy. He just knows he’s going to say something stupid. It’s been a weird day. Connor owns _chickens_ now.

“Okay,” says Kevin, and fidgets, scratching his wrists idly. “I - er, there’s another reason I didn’t make you a chicken.”

Connor gives him a look.

“Because,” Kevin elaborates. “You’re like, not a chicken at all. You’re the bravest person I know.”

Connor wants to kiss him. Elder McKinley wants to kiss Elder Price, chickens be damned.

“You always get all the spiders for me, and you never complain about itchy bites, and you’re the only one who officially emancipated themselves, which, like, is really cool. And you’re totally not afraid to be yourself even though being you sucks.”

Kevin looks so incredibly anxious that it makes Connor’s heart melt.

“Kevin,” Connor says, reaching over to grab Kevin’s hand to stop him scratching at his wrists. “In the interests of not being a chicken. Have I been misreading every single interaction between us recently?”

“No,” says Kevin, slowly. Connor rubs his thumb on the back of Kevin’s hand, just because he can. “But Elder Price Jr. isn’t the rooster for a reason.”

“Cool,” says Connor, and leans over to kiss him.

The chickens carry on their merry way. The kiss is perfect and too much and not enough all at one. Elder Price kisses Connor the way he does everything. Ridiculously and brilliantly.


End file.
